by Gregg Loomis
24H rue Norvins, Montmartre, Paris
That evening
Lang remembered Patrick’s third-story walk-up flat. On the city’s tallest hill, it was equidistant from Paris’s last vineyard, also on the hillside, and Sacre-Coeur, with its odd, ovoid domes. The church, built in the late nineteenth century with private funds, was visible from nearly anywhere in the city.
Montmartre had been a center for Paris’s artistic community for two hundred years. Gericault and Corot had painted here at the beginning of the nineteenth century. On any day it was not raining, almost every corner had its impromptu gallery displaying everything from copies of old masters to photographically real scenes from the city to contemporary blobs of undecipherable meaning.
Patrick’s wife, Nanette, had chosen the area, Lang suspected, with her husband’s less-than-enthusiastic agreement. An artist herself, she had spent her earlier years here before her talent brought her to the attention of one of France’s largest advertising firms, where she had put her ability to work in a commercially successful if less-inspiring career.
Since French law strictly mandated a thirty-five-hour-maximum workweek and four weeks minimum vacation, she still had ample time to paint, as evidenced by the artwork decorating the walls of the apartment. She embraced Lang at the door, thanked him profusely for the dozen red roses and insisted on opening a bottle of reasonably good champagne in his honor.
Lang watched her pour two flutes. She was almost as tall as Gurt, slender with a face slightly too narrow, a feature emphasized by shoulder-length dark hair that he knew she wore in a chignon with dark business suits for work.
Stem glass in hand, Lang inspected the paintings that covered every available bit of wall space, murmuring appreciation of each. As usual, he silently marveled at the ability of Europeans, particularly those dwelling in large cities, to live in spaces Americans would consider claustrophobic. Two small bedrooms and a single closet of a bath opened off of a living room/dining area of less than three hundred square feet. Standing at the stove, no part of the kitchen was out of reach. Yet Nanette, Patrick and their son, Gulliam, seemed quite comfortable.
Gulliam. The boy would be about the same age as Lang’s nephew, Jeff, had he not…
Don’t go there. You have a son, a wife and life is good.
“Patrick will be late,” Nanette announced in flawless English. “Something to do with a shooting at the Sorbonne. A refill?”
Lang held out his glass, saying nothing.
He went to the sofa, his bed for the night, and shuffled through the pockets of the Burberry he had tossed there upon entering the apartment. “While we’re waiting, I wonder if you could translate something for me?”
“I will try.”
Lang handed her the French version of D’Tasse’s work. “Thanks. If you don’t mind, just read it to me in English.”
She went to a desk and took out a pair of glasses. Lang did not recall her using them before. But then, he had never seen her read anything other than a menu. He supposed vanity had prevented her from wearing them in public.
Leaning over to catch the light from a lamp on a table, she studied the first page before she began. She had been reading for only about five minutes before Patrick’s key rattled in the lock and he entered, overcoat draped over one arm.
“Sorry I am late.” He went the armoire against the far wall and carefully hung up his coat before giving Lang a meaningful look. “There was a shooting at the Sorbonne this afternoon. D’Tasse’s office. The police wanted to question you.”
“Question Lang?” Nanette asked in confusion. “Surely they don’t think…”
Patrick shut the armoire’s doors. “Wanted is the past tense, no? It is a matter of national security, since we believe the victim is employed by the Guoanbu.”
Lang guessed the French had a picture-ID system like the Agency’s.
Patrick continued. “It is a matter for the DGSE, not the local police.”
Lang wondered how much weight Patrick had thrown around to accomplish that.
“The Guo-what?” Nanette asked.
“Chinese state security,” Patrick said, taking the champagne bottle from the ice bucket and inspecting the label. “Strange. They wanted an article written by a professor, something about Bonaparte. And were willing to take it at gunpoint.”
Nanette looked from the manuscript in her hand to Lang and back again. “Could they not simply read it when it was published?”
Patrick was pouring into a flute. “We believe they did not want to wait until the article became public. We do not know why. The inscrutable Oriental, no?”
Nanette held up the papers in her hand, puzzled. “Why would Chinese want…?”
Patrick forgot the champagne. “Is that it? Is that the article on Bonaparte by your friend Henri D’Tasse?”
Even more confused. “Yes, yes it is. I was translating it for Lang.”
Patrick sat on the sofa, glass in one hand, the other fishing for the box of Gitanes. “Please, start at the beginning and read it to both of us.”
Twenty minutes later, she finished.
Lang was staring into space. “He left his most prized possession to his secretary’s namesake? Who would that be? And what was it he left?”
Patrick held up the champagne bottle, ruefully noting it was empty. “There is a computer on the table in our bedroom. The answer to your first question could be sought on Google. But first there is the matter of dinner. On the other side of Sacre-Coeur there is a bistro with the best moules frites, mussels and fried potatoes, in Paris. We can easily walk there.”
Jesus, does this guy ever get tired of seafood?
Seated at a small and dimly lit table, Lang barely noticed the muted hubbub around him. His thoughts were on Saint Denis’ diary. What could Napoleon have had that was so precious to him? The obvious answer was the contents of the box that kept reoccurring in the diary’s frequently disjointed passages, the box that was brought from Egypt, was taken to Haiti by Leclerc and returned by his widow. But what was in the box? Alexander’s mummy-or what was left of it? Of everything Napoleon possessed, that would be a macabre favorite. Was its present location somehow revealed by his secretary? The Chinese must have thought so; otherwise what would they want with a soon-to-be-published scholarly article?
And Saint Denis’ namesake.
A son?
Lang stopped, a mussel speared on a fork halfway to his mouth.
Wait a second.
The diary did not mention a namesake; he had just assumed that was what was meant. The words were in your name. Was the distinction important?
“You do not like the moules?” Patrick asked, interrupting Lang’s thoughts.
Lang ate the one on his fork. “No, er, I mean, yes. They’re quite good.”
Nanette studied Lang’s face. “I think perhaps he has… what is the phrase? Something on his mind.”
“I was thinking about Saint Denis’ diary and what Napoleon meant when he said he was leaving his most precious possession.” He paused a moment. “What does the name Saint Denis mean to you?”
“It is the location of the Paris football stadium,” Patrick answered immediately. “The Pomme de Pain there has closed, to be replaced by a McDo’s…”
A popular version of French fast food, a sandwich chain, had been replaced by McDonald’s, “McDo” in Parisian slang. Lang wanted to head off a discussion of American fast food, which the French blamed for, among other things, the current world economic problems, global warming and the collapse of Western civilization. In spite of the antagonism, KFC, Subway and Pizza Hut, to name a few, attracted a large following in Paris.
“The football stadium,” Lang repeated. “Is Saint Denis the street address?”
“It is the area where it is located,” Nanette interjected, “a suburb north of Paris. It is also the location of a very old church, the one where all but three of the kings of France after the tenth century were buried in the crypt.”
> “Could Napoleon have left his prized possession to a church?” Lang asked skeptically. “I mean, the revolution was anticlerical.”
“It was he who returned the building to the church. The revolutionaries had confiscated all of them,” Nanette said.
Patrick used a paper napkin to wipe the mussels’ juice from his lips. “Not only did they confiscate the basilica of Saint Denis, they opened all the royal tombs in the crypt and dumped the remains into a common pit. Later, when the basilica was restored to the Catholic Church, it was impossible to tell which was which. The various relics went into a common ossuary.” He glowered at Lang and Nanette as though this disposed of the matter and there was no need to continue this breach of French dinner-table etiquette. “Now, who would like another glass of wine?”
Unabashed, Lang asked, “So none of the kings are in their tombs?”
Patrick looked at his wife, daring her to answer.
She did anyway. “Not quite so. Ironically, the last two Bourbons are the only ones who have their own resting places today.”
“I thought Louis XVI was dumped in an unmarked grave with his wife, Marie Antoinette, following about nine months later,” Lang said.
“True,” Nanette responded. “Their bodies, along with about twenty-eight hundred other victims of the guillotine, were disposed of in that way.”
“Then how did they wind up in Saint Denis?”
“A lawyer, a secret royalist, lived nearby. He saw both the headless royal bodies dumped there and marked the places in his mind. Later, he bought the little garden where they had been treated so rudely and planted trees over the site. When Louis XVIII came to power after Bonaparte was defeated the first time, he had the bodies removed to Saint Denis and a monument erected in January of 1815. There were only skulls and a few bones and part of a lady’s garter left because the bodies had been covered with quicklime.”
Patrick put down his fork, disgusted. “This talk of bodies and guillotines does not go well with dinner, no? Let us discuss it afterward.”
Lang thought a moment, either not hearing or ignoring his friend. “A monument after a mass grave? That would be a return from anonymity, would it not? And Saint Denis, the church, would be ‘in the name of’ the guy writing the diary. And what better place for Alexander’s mummified body, or whatever is left of it, than a crypt?”
He stood, forgetting his half-eaten meal. “How long will it take to get to this church?”
Patrick looked up at him as though Lang had uttered some particularly vile blasphemy by suggesting the meal not be finished. “The church would be closed by now. Sit, enjoy your dinner.”
Another thought made Lang sit. “But how could Napoleon put anything there? He was on Elba until the spring of 1815.”
“He had many followers eager to do his bidding, as witnessed by how quickly he raised an army after his escape,” Nanette offered. “And he returned to Paris straight from Elba, presumably with full access to Saint Denis or any other church in the city. But do not consider going to Saint Denis at night. The area is not safe.”
Lang was on his feet again. “You can bet the Chinese aren’t worried about safety. We have to get whatever is in that church before they figure out what Napoleon meant.”
He signaled frantically for the check. “I can’t wait.”
With a sigh of resignation, Patrick stood. “And I cannot allow you to go to the Saint Denis area alone and at night.”
2 rue de Strasbourg
Basilique Saint Denis
An hour later
Stopping only for Patrick to go by his apartment and retrieve two flashlights and his PAMAS G1 with two extra clips of ammunition, it still seemed to Lang that the Metro took forever to deliver them to Saint Denis. The station was one of the few he had seen that was dirty, littered, and streaked with graffiti, a preview of the shabby neighborhood it served. The small number of passengers disembarking the train here appeared to be of North African descent, the women with heads covered and the men bearded.
Outside, the buildings had the dispirited look of public housing. Behind chain-link screens, the few store windows displayed cheap household appliances against backgrounds stark enough to proclaim any hope of good fortune had long since departed. Scruffy cars were parked along the curb, many with flat tires indicating they had taken up permanent residence there. Lang immediately noticed the occasional pedestrians traveling in groups, who glared resentfully at him and Patrick.
He was grateful for Patrick’s company.
Turning the corner around a particular grim high-rise decorated with hanging bedsheets and other laundry despite the sporadic drizzle, they faced the Basilica of Saint Denis. It was like discovering a prize rose growing in a weed patch. Lit by a battery of floodlights, a single tower reached heavenward, oblivious to its dowdy surroundings. The church was a pleasing combination of Gothic and Romanesque built of what Lang guessed was white limestone, burnished to gold by the surrounding lights.
“Is beautiful, no?” Patrick asked. “But what is your plan to get inside?”
“Get inside?” Lang asked. “They lock the church?”
“My friend, in this neighborhood, that which is not securely locked at night has been looted by morning.” He pointed to the left portal, two massive doors secured by a heavy chain and large padlock. “I think it would take some time to get through that.”
Lang fished in his pocket, producing a ring of keys. “Then we’ll just unlock it.”
“You have the key…?”
Lang held one up. At first glance, it resembled any ordinary key. Closer inspection revealed a series of bumps along one edge.
“A bump key. Most people have no idea how simply the normal pin-tumbler lock can be defeated. Watch.”
Lang approached the huge doors, noting with surprise the ornate carvings on the stone frame were signs of the zodiac, more pagan than religious. Holding the big padlock in one hand, he inserted the key and then sharply rapped the bottom of the lock against the wooden door. There was an metallic snap and the lock sprung open.
Patrick was looking over Lang’s shoulder. “That is a very convenient thing to have in your pocket.”
“Us former Boy Scouts come prepared. Now, lets get inside and close the doors before someone gets suspicious and calls the cops.”
Patrick chuckled dryly. “It would take more than a suspicion to get the flics here at night. Even so, they will not come unless there are a number of them. The residents of Saint Denis do not like policemen.”
Once inside, Lang reached through the cracked-open doors and managed to drape the chain back into position along with the open lock. It would require a detailed examination for a passerby to notice the church was no longer secured.
The outside lights shone through huge, airy windows, creating a chiaroscuro of lofty arches soaring far above and columns with the circumference of redwoods marching in soldierly ranks. Lang regretted the outside lights did little to illuminate what he was certain would be exquisite stained-glass windows.
Their footsteps echoing against the marble floor, the pair made their way past candles flickering in front of side chapels from which pained saints suffered a variety of martyrdoms.
At last, Patrick tugged on Lang’s sleeve. “The entrance to the crypt.”
The ambient light from outside created as much shadow as illumination. Still, no matter what Patrick had said about the indifference of the police, Lang hesitated to use his flashlight for fear someone outside might see the flicker. Extending a hand toward Patrick, he felt an iron rail about waist high. Behind it, Patrick seemed to be sinking into the floor. Only when the Frenchman was beneath the level of the church did he turn on his light, revealing a set of steps that ended somewhere in darkness.
“It is OK to use the torch here,” Patrick said. “The crypt has no windows.”
As Lang descended, he could feel a dampness and chill that made him pull his new overcoat more tightly about him. There was the smell that he associ
ated with places where there was little air circulation, a mustiness reminiscent of dust and cobwebs. The sound of outside traffic vanished; the stillness was like a tangible curtain between present and past, demanding any speech be in whispers.
Straight ahead, a low wooden door emerged from the gloom. There was no knob, only a rusted metal plate with a handle about two feet from the floor, below which its ancient keyhole yawned for a key far larger than the one in Lang’s pocket.
“Someone’s afraid the occupants will escape?” Lang asked in surprise.
“To keep out vandals?” Patrick suggested.
“Locking the barn door two hundred years after the horse is gone,” Lang muttered.
Patrick pushed on the iron plate with no result. Then he pulled the handle, surprising both himself and Lang when the door opened an inch or so toward them. Another tug and the door groaned on its hinges and opened another few inches. In seconds, the entrance stood open.
“Look.” Patrick was pointing with his flashlight’s beam. “The key is on the inside.”
Lang contemplated the iron key. The part outside the lock was nearly a foot long. “Either the residents insist on their privacy, or someone wanted to make sure the original key didn’t get swiped by some souvenir hunter.”
Inside, he played his light to his left. Like icebergs in an Arctic sea of darkness, sarcophagi floated in random groupings. Most displayed recumbent likenesses of the original occupant. One, a large mausoleum, depicted a well-dressed royal couple contemplating their nude likenesses. Many had been chipped, cracked or otherwise defaced, the handiwork of revolutionary vandals two centuries past.
It was clear the crypt, like the church itself, had been built in stages. He and Patrick had descended into the older portion, as evidenced by relatively crude barrel vaults. A short distance away, slender Gothic arches opened into dark emptiness.
The previous resting places of Charles Martel and Saint Louis immediately attracted Lang’s attention. He was trying to find an angle with his light that would make the words carved below the latter’s effigy legible.